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Old 01-07-2019, 11:46 AM   #31
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

I would say dragons are a good example of why a one-dimensional threat rating is not adequate to describe how dangerous something is.

Dragons as listed are not as deadly as I would expect, and are quite vulnerable especially to groups of humans, if the situation (i.e. usually the dragon's behavior) allows the humans to do multiple attacks per turn on it. On the other hand, a dragon played smart in the right situations can kill many humans, or at least avoid being killed (if nothing else, by being given a contest of IQ with a bonus for lifetime survival thinking and the ability and habit of flying and surveying scenes from the air before descending, and simply not attacking dangerous-looking groups of humans).


Dragons face several issues:

* Groups of armed humans tend to be able to do a lot of damage in a few turns. Dragon ST, armor, and damage may look high, but really doesn't compete well with a group of armed humans, so they need to avoid being attacked by several humans at once, but that's hard given the movement rules for multi-hex creatures, unless they stay flying or use terrain or the situation otherwise allows them to avoid being ganged up on.

* The larger ones can be defeated by the problematic simplistic Effects of Injury rules that let you knock anything down and take it out of action for two turns by doing 25 points of damage to it in one turn, regardless of how much ST it has or whether it is a four-legged creature.

* Dragons only get a claw and a breath attack that do damage, but the damage values are not that great, and the breath attack uses thrown modifiers and reduces the dragon's ST by as much as taking a strong weapon hit themselves.

* Aimed shots to the wings, especially if the GM decides arrows can do normal damage to dragon wings, and even moreso if he decides they get no armor.

* The tail and trample abilities are resistable with a 3-die roll, so aren't that useful against more capable humans.


Effective dragon tactics include:

* Roleplay them as very smart & cunning monsters who have developed habits that have kept them alive for many years, meaning they will avoid doing anything with much chance of getting them crippled or killed, if they can help it.

* Don't do assaults on groups of armed humans.

* Convince the GM that if you've survived long enough as a dragon to be 7-hexes or greater, you have a good chance of having schemed, traded, or slain your way into possession of magic items, preferably things like Stone Flesh or Reverse Missiles.

* Stay flying and use obstacles to keep yourself where ranged attacks can't hit you (and/or Dodge) until the turn you zoom across the tactical map in one turn when you win initiative, attacking one victim at a time, possibly from the side/rear and/or avoiding archer/wizard ranged facing, and then zooming away to circle back.

* Fly high and drop boulders on people.

* Surprise attacks.

* Consider whether the cost of a breath attack is worth it or not.

* Consider retreating after first getting injured or using fatigue, and going and resting up before tracking down the foes and attacking again. A thoughtful GM should pro-rate your resting rates to your ST, so a ST 60 dragon would rest/heal ST at 6 times the rate of humans.

* If you are for some reason staying and fighting, try to move so as to avoid being attacked by as many foes as possible per turn.


Some possible GM house rule buffs for dragons include:

* Fix the Effects of Injury for high-ST monsters, so it takes at least 1/2 ST or more damage in one turn to knock down a dragon.

* Change the rules for nimble four-legged animals getting up from being knocked down - if you knock over a dog or lion, they aren't out of action as long as a human. I imagine the same would be true for a dragon or hydra, so maybe let most 4-legged creatures get up on their next action instead of losing their next action and then get up.

* Use a house rule about "you don't engage me" options, so three hobgoblins or Images can't immobilize a 7-hex dragon and keep it from turning around or flying away.

* Use one or the other of the articles in Interplay about dragons, particularly the one that converts dragon breath to area effect and lets dragons spend points to customize themselves.

* If a dragon isn't breathing fire, let it do a bite attack instead (Steve said he thought that sounded reasonable on TFT Discord chat a while ago).

* Let dragons learn talents, e.g. Tactics, Strategy, Toughness, Thrown Attacks, Brawling, Running, Aerobatics, Claw Mastery, Breath Mastery, etc.

* Rule that bolts/arrows/slings don't do significant damage to wings (or at most 1 point).

* Dragon resting/healing appropriate to their size (multiply healing rate by ST / 10).

* And of course, a real game-changer would be if they could use spells.

Last edited by Skarg; 01-08-2019 at 12:51 AM.
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Old 01-11-2019, 11:53 AM   #32
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

Here's how I would arrange things:
  • There is a gate in the center of each of the mountain hexes with conceal-5 on it.
  • Use a crystal ball to determine which gate to use.
  • A small team steps through the gate and does Calling-Dragon.
  • When the dragon arrives they step back through the gate and the next team activates in the next hex over.
  • Continue kiting the dragon until you've got him in the right spot.
  • Oh no, yet another rogue dragon is attacking the village of the alchemists.
  • Activate the air defenses to slice up the beast.
  • Once all the dragons within a few score miles are exterminated relocate the village and start over.

Alternative: Do one calling on a major flight route inside a cave that has a huge one way gate for dragons only to the Abattoir chamber.
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Old 01-12-2019, 09:57 AM   #33
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Here's how I would arrange things:
  • There is a gate in the center of each of the mountain hexes with conceal-5 on it.
  • Use a crystal ball to determine which gate to use.
  • A small team steps through the gate and does Calling-Dragon.
  • When the dragon arrives they step back through the gate and the next team activates in the next hex over.
  • Continue kiting the dragon until you've got him in the right spot.
  • Oh no, yet another rogue dragon is attacking the village of the alchemists.
  • Activate the air defenses to slice up the beast.
  • Once all the dragons within a few score miles are exterminated relocate the village and start over.

Alternative: Do one calling on a major flight route inside a cave that has a huge one way gate for dragons only to the Abattoir chamber.
Seems like another very tall order in terms of being able to organize/control a population to go along with your plans. Requirements to attempt:
* A good reason why.
* Parties with gate wizards willing/able to go into the mountains to set up the network.
* A crystal ball. (seems to me like it would be optional, though.)
* A community that won't object to your plan to try to wipe out the dragons by bringing dragons to town one at a time.
* "Air defenses".
* Later, the community being willing to "relocate the village".

It points to aspects of two magic abilities which I think generally could be problematic, though (praise be to Steve Jackson) one has I think been nicely limited to avoid implied possible applications of this sort, in the new edition:

* Calling is still annoyingly irresistible, but it was always limited to a relatively short distance, meaning you're going to need a very dense gate network to cover a large area, and called creatures do not have to put themselves in great danger, so what you're going to do, it seems to me, is get dragons to see they're being called to some town, at which point they'll probably leave, and probably tell the other dragons about it. Though I'd also expect the dragons to know something was up long before, what with the gate network construction crews trying to put gates every few miles in the mountains...

* Crystal balls were far too easy/reliable/powerful in original TFT. However in the new rules they merely let you see some scene up to the GM, which unless the GM is really wanting your scheme to work efficiently, seems unlikely to often help you pinpoint dragons very well.

Even if society were down with your plan, the gate network were in place, the range of Calling wasn't an issue, the breaking down gates weren't an issue, the inability of Calling to make creatures put themselves in great danger weren't an issue, the crystal balls weren't needed, and your air defenses were great, dragons still average higher IQ than humans by a lot, and the bigger ones clearly have good survival habits.

Depending on how many dragons there actually were out there and what sizes and community they have (and presumably, there are enough to make your project worth the effort which would tend, it seems to me, to be many dragons), I think the actual result of an effective such system would be either the dragons either leave the area, or they organize a massive dragon counterattack.
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Old 01-12-2019, 11:32 AM   #34
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

How do the dragons respond to a calling into a gate to a death chamber on the other side of the world?
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Old 01-12-2019, 06:37 PM   #35
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

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How do the dragons respond to a calling into a gate to a death chamber on the other side of the world?
You'd have to play it out, and it would depend on many things such as what the dragon population is like and what this death chamber is that it somehow bypasses the clause about Calling not getting things to go very dangerous places, and what happened during its creation.

And I'm sure if you try hard enough you can wipe out the dragons... not sure why someone (let alone society) wants to try, or what your point is here.

But I tend to imagine that sooner or later, a dragon being Called is going to roar and get noticed by and/or reported to some other dragons, who will then both know it is a danger (so Calling will stop working to get dragons to go into it) and provoke a response.
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Old 01-12-2019, 08:14 PM   #36
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

There is no danger for a dragon in the cave, they just get gated away as they're called into the cave.

Setup costs:
2-hex magic carpet: $10,500
50 point powerstone: $51,000

Weekly cost:
Dangerous work for an IQ 15 wizard: $300
200 points of powerstone recharge: $1000

You're going to need to trap about four dragon hearts each week (at a new location for the dragon roach motel) to get this to pay off. A 14-hex dragon every year would also help.
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Old 01-12-2019, 11:14 PM   #37
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
There is no danger for a dragon in the cave, they just get gated away as they're called into the cave.

Setup costs:
2-hex magic carpet: $10,500
50 point powerstone: $51,000

Weekly cost:
Dangerous work for an IQ 15 wizard: $300
200 points of powerstone recharge: $1000

You're going to need to trap about four dragon hearts each week (at a new location for the dragon roach motel) to get this to pay off. A 14-hex dragon every year would also help.
If the gate in the cave results in them not coming back, it would seem pretty dangerous. How the Calling spell's limits work is up to the GM to determine, but it seems to me that there are many ways it could/would end up in some other way than the dragon flies through your gate.

The spell calls the subject to the wizard, but the subject won't endanger itself, and the subject gets to stop when it "arrives".

I'd tend to think that entering unfamiliar caves might even qualify both as having arrived, and/or as being a dangerous place, even just on sight, particularly for a high-IQ safety-conscious dragon who is not accustomed to being the subject of a Calling spell.

Moreover, even if the GM lets your gate scheme work, as soon as another dragon witnesses or hears about the scheme (and apparently you're expecting a high-dragon-density area), then I'd think word would spread really quickly, and getting Called places would be considered dangerous, especially into caves.

i.e. Even if you concoct an effective such scheme, using it in a dragon-rich area seems like an invitation to a massed dragon counterattack, and/or something that would have the dragons move out of the area and _then_ plot a terrible demise for whoever was doing that.

Last edited by Skarg; 01-13-2019 at 12:52 AM.
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Old 01-15-2019, 02:10 PM   #38
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

I just revised the monster tables with the new threat rating system so they shouldn't instantly trash your party.

You can try the random generation here:

http://www.hcobb.com/tft/squad.php

Once I get all the features of DS worked out I'm tempted to make a more storytelling online adventure next time.

The choice is do I let the player freely choose any character type they want or hand them an awkward munchkin that they then develop over time by choosing where to put their XPs?
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Old 01-15-2019, 05:19 PM   #39
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
I just revised the monster tables with the new threat rating system so they shouldn't instantly trash your party.

You can try the random generation here:

http://www.hcobb.com/tft/squad.php

Once I get all the features of DS worked out I'm tempted to make a more storytelling online adventure next time.

The choice is do I let the player freely choose any character type they want or hand them an awkward munchkin that they then develop over time by choosing where to put their XPs?
The attributes seem higher, but looking at a bunch of urban Regular human mercenaries, I still see more than I would expect of:

* zero shields
* zero people with Missile Weapons
* redundant unused weapon talents, including specialist talents for weapons not equipped - e.g. Fencer with a broadsword)
* high number of peculiar weapons
* generally rather surprisingly higher number of talents than IQ
* high number of peculiar hobby talents and random exotic languages - (If I want someone who knows Sasquatchish, I'm going to try your mercenaries' guild before I try my local scholars' guild.)
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Old 01-15-2019, 05:55 PM   #40
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Default Re: Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

Sasquatchish? isn't listed on the Rosetta Stone or Babbel websites.
Planning a trip to speak with the Tibetan monks. maybe they know the Yetian dialect.
Anyone want to come along?

and the LOL award goes to Skarg.
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